I can’t teach my daughter to read until she gets her alphabet understood. She knows all letters except H, N, and U. I’ve done everything I can think of to teach these letters to her. She completely knows her phonics—again except these three letters. She is 6 now. Any suggestions?

You mentioned in your email that you didn’t think you could teach your daughter to read unless she knew all of her letters and sounds. I disagree with you there. I think it’s important to apply what we learn as soon after we learn it as possible. Maybe she’s just tired of learning letters for letters sake, and doesn’t understand why she’s learning them.

When I teach reading, I start with the letters m, a, p, s, t, b, h, and n. As soon as they know these letters and can tell me what they say, I start blending these letters into words. You make a remarkable amount of words with just these letters. Learning the ABC’s in a vacuum without application is not much fun. Don’t worry about the letters that she doesn’t know yet, concentrate on the letters that she does know. Blend these letters into simple phonetic words and let her sound them out. I like to think of as many blending games as I can by using a set of cards that have the letters that they know on them. I hold them in my hand and let them pick three cards and lay them out. Then we sound out what they picked. Sometimes they’re nonsense words, but they get the idea that I want them to read what they picked. Then I reverse it and I pick three cards. We play this game back and forth several times and they hear and see me read what I picked. Seeing me do it often helps them understand what I’m trying to get them to do.

Another blending trick I use that often helps them hear the difference between sounding out each letter and blending them into words is to read a very familiar book to them (or at least a page of it) sounding out each letter as I go. This has to be a very familiar book that they know and can instantly recognize that this is not how the book should be read. They can hear the difference between sounding out each letter and blending those letters into words. Repetition is the key here. Playing and inventing lots of blending games will help him here and understand the difference. Keeping it fun will make him want to “play” again. Good luck and enjoy the process of working with your child.